New Criticals


These examples show clearly how nature is characterized at the root by a matrix of numbers and mathematical expressions involving a series of physical, optical, chemical-physical, electromagnetic and nanometric phenomena influencing its forms, species, colours, sounds and structures. If science is considered an organic complex of knowledge obtained through a methodical procedure, capable of providing a precise description of the real aspect of things and the laws by which the phenomena happen, and if the rules governing such process are generally called "scientific method", then the experimental observation of a natural event, the formulation of a general hypothesis about such event and the possibility of checking the hypothesis through subsequent observations become fundamental elements in modern scientific research.

All of this is really evident in some video works that have been collected within the screening Hidden Worlds, a critical reflection upon the existing connection between audiovisual art, energy and science on the borders of cinema, video and digital. A project that was born from a lecture held at Science Museum in Naples in 2008 followed by the curatorship at Sincronie: music and astronomy festival in 2009. Hidden Worlds doesn't some pioneering works which were not possible to include in the screening, like the studies on Cymatics carried out by naturalist Hans Jenny that explain how every existing sound can be reproduced starting from a waveform visualizable through precise geometrical forms, depending on the medium used. Moreover, some Mary Ellen Bute's works like Abstronic, that examine the expressive potentialities of the electrons flow within a cathode ray tube, shooting the film with a number of abstract animations to the rhythm of music. And Johny Whitney finally, who with Permutations, applied his "Computational Periodics" theories to the field of computer graphic, obtaining a "series of harmonic events in the audiovisual introduction", where a specific simulation of a musical progression can be achieved through the multiple superimposition of graphic objects.

What it is today recognized as "immersive art-science" is a form of creative expression meant to rise above the notion of art as abstract representation, in behalf of a multi-sensorial experience. The purpose here is to create aesthetical fascinating objects and also to invite the public to go beyond ordinary perception's border. Immersivity awakens a synesthetic awareness both in the mental and in the physic space. A myriad of vibrant phenomena, usually beyond the observer's reach, are instead made reachable through an accurate psychophysical conditioning.